Yosemite: Where Mules Wear Diamonds

Originally published in 1989

Bob Barrett was raised on a small ranch in the Chowchilla Mountain area of Mariposa County, California. He took his first trip into the Sierras of Yosemite in 1948 and has been going back ever since. In 1956 he started packing for the National Park Service in Yosemite and has spent a lifetime of summers in Yosemite's backcountry. His life long work has been around horses and mules, as a working cowboy on ranches and as a practiced blacksmith and horseshoer. The past twenty years he has taught horseshoeing and horsemanship classes at Merced College.

Bob lives in Hornitos, California with his wife Joyce, they have two daughters, Frankie and Jodi and grandson Tyler Marks. When his oldest daughter Frankie worked a season as a guide for the Curry Company, she was the fifth generation in Bob's family to work in Yosemite.